MANAGEMENT OF PASTURES. 73 



require much more careful treatment than our customs 

 favour. If sheep are put on the field in its first year, our 

 almost universal custom, the slower growing grasses are 

 trampled out, and the more palatable ones are eaten out. 

 If on the other hand cattle are put on, the ground being soft 

 becomes poached. Such pastures should be shut up for hay 

 until the ground is firm, then grazed by cattle so that only 

 the rankest grasses are eaten off, and not until the slowest 

 grasses are well established should sheep be put on the land. 

 This treatment is almost impossible under our system of 

 farming, and as a result we lose from our mixtures the grasses 

 slowest to mature, and especially those that are most 

 palatable. The grasses slowest to establish themselves are 

 usually those of permanent habit, and thus the best grasses 

 are lost from the mixture, and after the short-lived grasses 

 are gone, we get a field more or less occupied by bare patches, 

 or inferior grasses, or sundry weeds. This is largely the 

 explanation of the failure of Cocksfoot to establish itself 

 when there is sown say three pounds of Cocksfoot with 

 twenty pounds of Perennial Rye, and of the failure of Prairie 

 Grass to stand stocking. It may be taken as certain that 

 it is waste of money to include a small quantity of a highly 

 palatable grass with a large quantity of one less palatable. 

 Such a field will appear to have plenty of feed, because of the 

 quantity of the less liked grass present, and so the stock will 

 be left on it, while in reality the more palatable grass is being 

 eaten so bare that it will never recover. It is often the case 

 that the less of a grass there is obvious in a field sown down 

 in a mixture, the better that grass is. Instances of this are 

 common. In a mixture of Chewings Fescue and Cocksfoot 

 the Cocksfoot will be eaten right out and the Chewings 

 Fescue left to occupy the land, or in a mixture of Timothy 

 and Ryegrass the Timothy will be hardly apparent except 

 upon the closest investigation. In fields sown in mixtures 



